About Me

My day job was as an emergency room nurse. I retired from it in April 2009. I have been writing since I was a kid. That's a long time ago. LOL I first published with 5 short stories then into novels. I enjoy living here in the South but my original home is Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. I have two sisters, one of whom is an artist. All of us are nurses because my dad wanted us to go into nursing because he wanted us to have a reliable job. I have to say that, no matter what the economy is doing, I've never been without a job. I guess that's a good thing. I have two pets all of which are rescue animals: the Golden Retriever Lily, and my cat, Liberty.
My previous Golden Retriever, Kate, died last year on February 13 and an hour later, my oldest sister, Marlene ("Snookie") died. It was a horrible day for me filled with grief. This February 4th, I lost my big yellow kitty, Acorn, who succumbed to cancer even after his surgery a year ago. He was quite a character and I will miss him terribly.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Mercy Hospital's Christmas Competition 1980's

Charlotte in Gingerbread

Way back in the 1980’s when I worked in Coronary Care at
Mercy Hospital before Carolinas Medical Center bought out the Sisters of Mercy,
we used to have an annual contest for the unit that had the best Christmas
display. (We were allowed to call it “Christmas”, not winter holiday or some
such politically correct name.) The prize was usually free lunch brought to the
unit for the nurses on all shifts to enjoy and a huge platter of Christmas
cookies.

We decided to do something extraordinary for our display,
something grand that would win that prize. I remembered the gingerbread houses
my parents used to make. They were not only beautiful, but very yummy, too.
They even brought a gingerbread house to my unit a couple times and I loved
that they did that. So my coworkers and I decided to make gingerbread houses
for our display. But we didn’t just want regular gingerbread houses, we wanted
to make downtown Charlotte like a whole city of gingerbread buildings.
(Actually, we made the base of the buildings from cardboard to prevent any
catastrophic collapse.)

We worked and worked on that city until the entire unite
smelled like vanilla icing and candy. While I was looking at some old pictures,
I found a picture of our gingerbread city all decorated for Christmas. We won!
We all got to share in the sandwiches and cookies and, of course, a mention in
the hospital newsletter that made us all rather proud. It was also my way of
honoring the memory of my parents who loved making gingerbread houses out of
real gingerbread each year for Christmas. It’s one of my best memories of Mom
and Pop. I still miss them.